Welcome to Transfigurations! This blog is intended to serve the orthodox Anglican community and the wider Christian community. We pray that all that is posted here will be faithful to the Scriptures as the inspired word of God, speak the truth in love, edify, bless and transform this local body of Christ, and be an impetus for revival, repentance, prayer and intercession!

Tuesday, August 18, 2015

The Coddling of the American Mind; Belfast Pastor on Trial for Offending Islam...more

Belfast Pastor on Trial for Offending Islam ...Pastor McConnell's prosecution is one of a growing number of examples in which British authorities — who routinely ignore incendiary speech by Muslim extremists — are using hate speech laws to silence Christians.

In what was described as an "extraordinary morning," more than 1,000 people appeared outside the courthouse singing hymns and waving placards — declaring "Christianity under persecution" and "Evil Sharia law is not welcome in our country" — in a mass show of solidarity for McConnell, who was cheered and applauded as he entered and exited the courthouse...

“He made clear that what is described above is business as usual in the fetal body parts industry in America. Many a child is slaughtered in the womb and then rendered, packaged and brokered to a multitude of industries, whose products and projects comprise the aftermarket for the roughly 1.2 million U.S. abortions annually,” Royall reported.

“It’s big business and getting bigger,” she continued, also commenting on the fact that most people in this industry view it as just that--a business like any other business.

In 2009, the business of fetal tissue sales was an $85 billion industry...

University of Massachusetts caught buying fetal parts to create humanized mice ...“Just a few years ago the thought of aborting babies, selling their cadavers, and growing their parts in mice would have sounded like some kind of science fiction horror novel. Now this practice has secretly grown until it is an everyday occurrence,” said Newman. “There are ethics breaches – and very likely criminal activity — at every level of this corrupt enterprise.”...

Masha Gessen, a lesbian journalist, activist and author, expressly admitted this fact in a 2012 interview with "ABC Radio": "It's a no-brainer that [homosexuals] should have the right to marry," she said. "But I also think equally that it's a no-brainer that the institution of marriage should not exist. ... [F]ighting for gay marriage generally involves lying about what we are going to do with marriage when we get there—because we lie that the institution of marriage is not going to change, and that is a lie."

Homosexual activist and pornographer Clinton Fein echoes Gessen's candid sentiments: "Demand the institution [of marriage] and then wreck it," he once wrote. "James Dobson was right about our evil intentions," he quipped. "We just plan to be quicker than he thought."

The goal is to water down marriage until marriage is pointless. And as evidenced by the burgeoning legal push for polygamous and incestuous "marriages"—even for the "right" to "marry" a robot—sexual anarchists are well on their way to achieving this goal...

The Economist: What’s driving American firms overseas AMERICAN companies are on the move. On August 6th CF Industries, a fertiliser manufacturer, and Coca-Cola Enterprises, a drinks bottler, both said they would move their domiciles to Britain after concluding mergers with non-American firms. Five days later Terex, which makes cranes, announced a merger which will involve moving its legally recognised headquarters from Westport, Connecticut, in New York’s tri-state area, to the tiny town of Hyvinkää, Finland. What’s driving these firms to pack up and go?

For more than 30 years companies, especially American ones, have been merging with foreign firms or acquiring them outright in order to shift their tax bases abroad. It started in 1982, when McDermott, a construction company, outsmarted America’s Internal Revenue Service (the IRS) by moving its base from New Orleans to Panama, where it had a subsidiary. Ever since, this kind of move, called a “corporate inversion”, has been an attractive way for American companies with overseas earnings to reduce their tax bills. Because the American taxman has unusually long arms, companies based in the United States who earn profits abroad can end up with piles of cash “stuck” overseas: earnings that face hefty corporate taxation the instant they are brought to America (for example to pay staff or to invest). An inversion might not affect a company’s day-to-day operations, but by changing the country of domicile officially, it can offer a way out. Since this means less revenue for Uncle Sam, the American government has been trying to desperately stop companies from fleeing and taking their revenue with them. But only rarely has the government been fleet-footed enough to catch them...

The Coddling of the American Mind-How Trigger Warnings Are Hurting Mental Health on Campus ...But vindictive protectiveness teaches students to think in a very different way. It prepares them poorly for professional life, which often demands intellectual engagement with people and ideas one might find uncongenial or wrong. The harm may be more immediate, too. A campus culture devoted to policing speech and punishing speakers is likely to engender patterns of thought that are surprisingly similar to those long identified by cognitive behavioral therapists as causes of depression and anxiety. The new protectiveness may be teaching students to think pathologically...

Amazon Is Cruel To Be Kind ... The Times report doesn’t leave room for the possibility that Bezos would be this self-aware (little surprise: being “vocally self-critical” is an Amazon leadership principle). Accepting that he is, what are we to make of a management philosophy that leads to employees being punished for caring for the dying, welcoming the newborn, and otherwise performing the most basic acts of human duty and love?

Put simply, I think the cruelties of Amazon’s corporate culture simply reflect the seriousness with which Bezos takes the progressive technological faith so many others only profess. If one assumes that the world is to be improved mostly through increases in efficiency (rather than acts of inefficient and gratuitous love), then the supreme duty of kindness is to advance technological progress. This is a quasi-religious “mission” (Amazon’s term) that demands heroic asceticism. Like the Society of Jesus, it may not be for everyone, but those who persist will have the pleasure of knowing they are serving the highest purpose. Ruthlessness may haunt the office culture, but kindness—understood by a certain technological logic—is the overarching goal...